


Beautiful

by olivemartini



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Cannon, F/M, Fluff, Pre-Relationship, Romance, Sweet, beautiful Hermione, drunk Ron
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-12
Updated: 2015-05-12
Packaged: 2018-03-30 04:10:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3922366
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/olivemartini/pseuds/olivemartini
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ron, Harry, Seamus, Dean, and Neville breaking into some firewhiskey and talking about which girls they thought were prettiest.  </p><p>or</p><p>The one where Ron discovers that he finds Hermione beautiful.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Beautiful

Despite the growing tension that comes from being Umbridge's thumb, the boys in the fifth year dormitory were finding ways to have fun. The Weasley twins had snuck them firewhiskey for the first time (for a small fee, of course). With their inhibitions lowered, Ron, Harry, Neville, Dean, and Seamus seemed to be confiding each other a little more in depth than normal.   
Firewhiskey was a curious thing, Ron mused. He didn't like the taste much, it was too acidic and sour, with a curious hint of cinnamon. He didn't like the way it burned going down, practically scorching his throat, and he could feel it sitting in his belly long afterwards. He didn't like the way his head was muddles, and his tongue was taking up three times the normal amount of space in his mouth. Most of all, though he didn't have much experience with it, he knew he loathed the hang over he would be dealing with in the morning.  
"Lavender's kind of hot, isn't she? Rather skinny, not much to her, and certainly lacking brains, but hot all the same. Not to many things she wouldn't be willing to do if given enough encouragement, if you get my drift." Seamus was practically leering, was talking in a way he had never talked before, and Ron didn't like it. He had also unknowingly wrinkled his nose when the part about lacking brains came up. Who would want a girl you couldn't carry on a conversation with? Maybe it was Ron growing up beside Ginny, who could match him with both wit and athletic ability, and being raised by his mother, who dominated his father in every argument using only her words. There was also a painful, annoying thought in the back of his mind that it might also be due in part to the fact that his best friend was Hermione Granger, who was practically a walking encyclopedia, and therefore a girl without brains was as foreign to him as an alien.  
"The twins." Dean blurted out, then reddened. There was an astonishing moment where Ron thought he was talking about Fred and George, but his mind was put at ease when he continued. "The Patil twins, I mean. I don't care which one. Give me both." Ron wrinkled his nose again, this time having a pang of sympathy for his twin brothers, imagining girls throughout Hogwarts saying the exact same thing about them, as if their bodies and their feelings were interchangeable.  
"Ginny's cute." Neville's eyes darted around the room until he found Ron. "No offense meant, mate."  
"None taken." His words were slurred, but his eyes were on Harry, because if his best mate started talking about how good his sister smelled and how he wanted to hold her hand, just one time (which is what he'd been mumbling about Cho for the past fifteen minutes, what got them started on this, really) he might lose it completely.  
"What about you Ron?" Harry's eyes regained one sliver of soberness, and his mouth twisted in a mischievous smile. "Any girl on your mind?"  
"Any bloke?" Seamus added, but from the look on his face, he wasn't joking. At this point, Ron comfortably aware of how Seamus was leaning into Dean, and made a promise to himself to always knock before entering the dorms from now on.   
"Well..." He had to offer something to the conversation, didn't he? "Hermione's okay looking. Pretty, I guess." Then, rationalizing that none of them would remember this in the morning, he certainly wouldn't, he told the truth. "Hermione's pretty bloody beautiful, actually."   
"Beautiful?" Seamus wrinkled his nose in disgust at this. "Mate, we don't call chicks beautiful."  
There was an uncomfortable silence where Ron argued his point -saying some rather sappy things about her hair, and her smile, and the way she looked when she was curled up beside him on the couch, all lit up by the fire- before they broke open the third bottle of firewhiskey. All night, he thought over his comment, and never realized that what he had said (beautiful, Hermione's bloody beautiful) was very different from what they were saying.


End file.
